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Cyber Crime: An Epidemic Plaguing the Nation

This infographic, created by kgbpeople.com tells the sordid tale of cyber crime. Sure, you’ve received the occasional scam email every now and then (well, to be more accurate, you probably receive one everyday), but have you ever stopped to think about just how many of the things are sent daily. It may come as no surprise to you that a mammoth 75 million scam emails are sent every single day, with 2,000 new victims created per day. Yes, believe it or not, there are people who actually mail money to Nigeria everyday in the hope that they’ll get a chest of gold out of an ancient Goonies-type cave or some other made-up location with hidden treasure that’s just waiting to be unearthed by a Nigerian prince and his American business partner (read: person ignorant enough to believe in anything).

The somewhat sad part of cyber crime is that 25% of all cases remain unsolved. Here’s another stat that will send shockwaves deep into your cyber-crime plagued soul. 73% of Americans have experienced some form of cyber crime. You know what that means: if you’re an American and you’re reading this, you’ve probably already been a victim. Now, let’s dig into some stats about the profiles of the hackers perpetrating these crimes. 66% are American, 10.5% are British, and 7.5% are Nigerian. Now, at first blush, you might be inclined to generalize based on those numbers that the percentage of people in Nigeria who hack and scam is inordinately high. But, when you consider that Nigeria has a population of 154 million compared to Britian’s 61 million, you realize that it’s not inordinately high at all and that there are actually more hackers per capita in the U.K. then there are in Nigeria.

I happened to catch the 1992 film Sneakers over the weekend, and what really grabbed my attention was how far we’ve come as a “hacking culture” since the early 90’s, which was really the birth of modern day hacking. Alright, it’s time for the grading portion. Good luck hacking your way out of this one.

Design: A-

This design is above-average at worst and superlative at best. A nice hodgepodge of charts, graphs, and unique illustrations combine to make this graphic a top tier one.

Content: A-

There are many useful facts here within. I would rate this graphic extremely highly from a content perspective, mainly because the realities it reveals about cyber crime are enough to cause many sleepless nights.

We here at the showcase applaud this graphic’s makers for a job well-done. (Our whole staff is now standing around a table and clapping.)